


Hoops

by bonebo



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Ratchet is an asshole, angst i think, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6819442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonebo/pseuds/bonebo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It doesn’t matter,</i> he repeats to himself, biting down on his smile as he hurries down the hall, wings perked and hands trembling. He would say the words again, but Ratchet has already shut off his end of the comm.—so Pharma tells the floor, the walls, the medical drones he passes.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter.” He sounds hysterical, even to his own audials—should be ashamed, he thinks—but he’s not. Desperate.</p><p>“Nothing matters, but you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bloodstains won't make it matter.

“I've got good things....I've got you.” The words shyly leave his lips, and Pharma bites down on his smile, looking up into Ratchet's face with hope; the older medic sits across from him with arms crossed, and Pharma knows he _should_ take this meeting seriously, but this office has been host to their desperate nights and drawn-out moans a few too many times for him to really be able to ignore the memories. Ratchet starts to speak and Pharma's optics wander, mind following more passionate trails—he'd been fragged over _that_ desk, and that one, and over _there_ was where Ratchet had first clipped a collar around his neck and growled at him—

“Pharma, are you paying attention?”

His gaze snaps back over, and now he's regretting not listening because Ratchet looks angry—Pharma doesn't like it when Ratchet is angry, and he likes even less what Ratchet _does_ when he's angry, and his wings droop in a way he hopes is placating. Ratchet's vents huff.

“...sorry,” Pharma murmurs, holding that burning glare for a moment before his optics drop, submissively; he finds an old groove his fingers had dug into the desk weeks ago, on one of the nights Ratchet was angry and didn't care for Pharma's words and reason, and runs his fingertips across it lightly. “I'm listening. Please continue.”

“As I was saying.” Ratchet's voice is professional, clinical, and that might be what hurts most of all—but Pharma swallows his objections like he has been practicing for the two years they've stumbled through this farce of a relationship, this exercise in desperation. He does not interject again. “There's nothing good left for you here, and I've decided a transfer is in order....”

_________________________________

“Are you lonely?” Pharma asks, as he sits in his quiet office, feet propped up and half-forgotten charts spilled across his lap; his fingertips drum across the surface of his desk, and Ratchet’s end of the comm. remains silent. Empty. “....Ratchet. Hello—?”

“Yes, yes, I’m here,” the other medic snaps back, sounding irritable as ever, and Pharma has to work hard to contain his sigh—he’s been stationed at Delphi for a little over a month now. They’ve gone a month apart, with nothing to fill the space left between but late-night comm. chats that are full of filthy words, sealed with empty promises, and only get shorter. It tears at Pharma to feel the distance between them grow.

“...I want to see you,” he says suddenly, voice cautious; Ratchet’s never too fond of his ideas. Hasn’t been since the days of Pharma’s training—since before they were...whatever they are. But he swallows his doubt and continues softly, “I miss you. Do you miss me?”

Ratchet’s reply is a sigh, and Pharma can all but see his scowl: the way his lips curl back, the roll of his optics. His spark aches with fondness and hurt alike. “Fine. I’m free later this week, if you can get here. Although I don’t think it’s wise to leave your first facility so soon—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pharma says breathlessly, already on his feet and heading to his quarters, urgency lending his tired frame speed he shouldn't have—he has to get ready. He’ll have to brief First Aid on running the place while he’s gone, but that should be easy enough; and even if it’s not, he doesn’t care.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ he repeats to himself, biting down on his smile as he hurries down the hall, wings perked and hands trembling. He would say the words again, but Ratchet has already shut off his end of the comm.—so Pharma tells the floor, the walls, the medical drones he passes.

“It doesn’t matter.” He sounds hysterical, even to his own audials—should be ashamed, he thinks—but he’s not. Desperate.

“Nothing matters, but you.”

___________________________________

He’s there the next day.

Ratchet meets him when he lands, ushers him back to his berthroom with a smile, hands low on Pharma's backstruts. They drink a little, talk less, then tumble through the berth covers in the only way Pharma has ever known, with stinging pain he endures for Ratchet’s pleasure, the growled promise in his audial that it will feel good for him too, eventually.

And it always does.

After, he lies tucked up against Ratchet's side, tracing over his abdominal plating and listening to their vents while the other medic rests—they're alternating breaths, similar and close, and Pharma tries to control his breathing so that they fall in sync.

He isn't able to. His spark aches again, though he can't place why.

When he finally manages to fall into recharge himself, his mind is plagued—he dreams of Ratchet's smile and hands that caress his frame, light spilling in through the stained glass windows of Vos, peaceful skies and warm sun on his wings. In his dream he is happy, and Ratchet is happy. They are happy together, and there is no war, no distance to make them cold.

He wakes when Ratchet stirs beside him, early the next morning, and remembers nothing. Ratchet leaves before Pharma has even finished his morning fuel, claiming his clinic needs him.

His flight back to Delphi is silent.


	2. Chapter 2

“Are you there?”

The voice takes him by surprise, makes him jump and look up, charts still in hand—Ratchet stands in the doorway, arms crossed and one optic ridge raised, the faintest of smirks playing at his lips. Pharma's spark flutters in his chest, wings snapping up in surprise; it's been weeks since he's seen Ratchet in person. Since he's been anything more than a voice over a hurried comm. or an image blown up on the screen—weeks since Pharma's spark has thrilled this way, whirled and hummed and flushed liquid heat through his lines. He tries, but can't hide his smile.

“You—how long have you been there?” He's still learning the layout of his new facility, Delphi's twists and turns; he has no way of knowing how Ratchet even got to his office, but he finds he doesn't care. Pharma gets to his feet like it's an instinct, and Ratchet is already in front of his desk, fixing him with that same intense look—the one that makes Pharma shudder, makes his spark ache with longing. How long—

“Long enough.” Ratchet moves closer, palms on the desk, and Pharma mirrors his actions, as though being pulled by an invisible string. Their fingertips brush and Pharma could swear he feels sparks fly, scalding him; but he can't pull his optics away from Ratchet's face. The shallowest parts of his spark urge him to lean closer, to kiss Ratchet and fall into his arms.

He can't.

“What took you so long?” Pharma makes himself step back, and it feels like dying; Ratchet's optics widen a fraction, then narrow. His mouth pulls into a thin line, and Pharma's determination quails. “...I mean...I've asked you to visit for weeks. You haven't been answering my comms. I can barely get you to talk to me anymore, and it feels like—”

“Get to your point, Pharma,” Ratchet interjects, voice low. He's crossed his arms again, Pharma notices helplessly, and tries to backtrack—he just wanted to talk. He didn't mean to cause a conflict. He wants to enjoy Ratchet's company, but he's smothering under the weight of everything he's kept unsaid, and if not now, then when? A month from now, when he finally gets to see the other medic again?

“I just—it feels—” He flounders under Ratchet's heated stare, wings tucking low behind his back; he searches for mercy in Ratchet's stoic face and finds none. “With how distant you're being...I can't help but feel like you're only a part of this, of _us_ , when you choose to be. When it's convenient, when you want a frag, when you've got nothing else better to do—”

His voice is rising, and he can't help it, he just _hurts_ and Ratchet doesn't _care_

“—and I can't help it, Ratchet, I feel like I feel too much and you feel nothing at all and I'm tired of it! I want more commitment from you, I want more interaction, I want—”

Ratchet's hand comes as a shock.

The slap turns his head and halts his voice, makes his cheek burn where the plating had connected. For a moment Pharma is stunned, his audials ringing with the blow, his fortitude withering away; then he drags his gaze back to Ratchet, slack-jawed and subdued, to face one of the most heated glares he's ever seen.

Ratchet is angry, that much is clear. Pharma's bravery has fled.

“I've been busy,” Ratchet growls, and he's a blur as he comes around the desk; Pharma can't move, can barely _breathe_ , and then Ratchet's hands are on the back of his neck and forcing him over, demanding as they grab over his interface panel. “You should be thankful I'm even here, right now. Primus knows I've got better things to be doing—lives to be saving, work to be doing. Instead I'm here, getting yelled at by you, as if I've done you some wrong.” Ratchet's own panel clicks aside, and Pharma feels the head of his spike nudge at his valve, insistently. “As if you're all I should be devoted to.”

The words sting, but Pharma doesn't contest them; he doesn't have the right. Instead, he offlines his optics and lets Ratchet's wrath wash over him, silently agreeing—he shouldn't have said anything. Ratchet is busy, he knows, and any of his free time is precious, and he'd chosen to spend it with Pharma and what had he done? Complained. He deserves the anger.

Ratchet takes him dry, and Pharma takes it as punishment. His regret bleeds down his thighs.

He waits until Ratchet has left again to cry.

\------------

Ratchet opens a clinic in Rodion. Suddenly his comms. get shorter, more distracted—in a few, Pharma can hear another voice, soft and lilting as it coaxes him back to the berth or away from his desk. Pharma can pick up the fondness in Ratchet's voice as he shoos the other mech away—his spark aches as he remembers a time _he_ was worthy of that affection—and, sometimes, there are two sets of vents audible, soft puffs of recovering exertion, when he calls late at night.

Pharma hates the voice, hates the mech behind it; hates what it could—does—mean. When Ratchet visits next, Pharma does not give voice to his concern.

They frag and Pharma tries to make it good, tries to match the voice he'd heard in harmonics and pitch when he moans; it's only after his overload that Ratchet casually mentions Pharma had sounded different, sounded odd, and tells him to check his vocalizer out in the morning for glitches. They lay down to recharge, and Pharma clings to him like he's dying.

Pharma dares not sleep himself. He lays awake and watches Ratchet breathe, traces over his shoulders and chestplates as lightly as he can: hoping to memorize every detail of them, from hue to texture.

He worries about how many more times he'll be allowed the luxury. The nameless voice haunts him until dawn.


	3. Chapter 3

The pressure, as it always does, breaks.

Weeks pass again, without Ratchet. Pharma's comms. go unanswered, and his mind runs away with a dozen different possibilities as to why, each more horrifying than the last. After a month of silence, he decides that his hand is forced, and makes plans to go visit Ratchet's clinic.

The decision terrifies him, if he's honest—fear of the unknown, of what he might find, chills him to his very spark. But if their relationship is doomed to failure, then Pharma wants to at least be granted the dignity of watching it crumble from the front lines, not from behind Delphi's walls.

Primus knows Ratchet owes him that much.

He tells First Aid of his plan as they finish repairing a wounded miner, the day before he's due to leave. He's almost finished going over what he expects of the nurse while he's gone when First Aid meets his gaze across the operating table, and Pharma's only warning of interjection is the other bot's half-heaved sigh.

“Don’t you think it might be, I don’t know, a bit too soon to go back to him?” First Aid's optics flicker, then dart away, almost as if he's embarrassed. Pharma's spark quails. “...After last time...”

He trails off, but it doesn't matter; nothing matters. Ratchet isn't here and nothing matters, and Pharma remembers the horror he'd seen on First Aid's face when he'd stumbled into Pharma's office after the last encounter, seen his CMO picking himself off the floor and out of his own blood—

Remembers his own words, half-choked and pleading— _“Get back, Ratchet—I said get back! You're hurting me—!”_

Remembers how tenderly Ratchet had held him, after, and kissed the cracks beaten into his faceplate. Whispered promises that it wouldn't happen again, how sorry he was, as his fingers twined with Pharma's—just like he did last time.

Pharma casts a look to First Aid, and manages a faint, bittersweet smile; he can still feel the ghost of Ratchet's fist against his lips, a memory of pain. His wings tremble as they, too, remember being the focus of Ratchet's attentions.

“...I can never go back too soon.”

__

He practices what he will say during his trip to Rodion—tells himself that he will be brave and not cower, not bend, because even if Ratchet ever loved him _Pharma loved himself first,_ and he has spent too many nights sleepless, staring out at the falling snow and wondering what it was, exactly, that he did wrong to deserve this treatment, this silence.

He's a smart mech, even if Ratchet won't ever tell him so, and deep down—in some hidden part of himself that Ratchet has yet to reach, to _infect_ —he knows the answer is nothing.

He tells himself this as he flies, swears to himself that he is worth more than a quick frag, more than a minute-long comm-chat after weeks of silence; he lands outside Ratchet's hab block, and the code to the door is a number he's memorized, and he takes all of two steps inside before he knows that he shouldn't have come.

Because what he finds is something he hadn't considered, even in his most terrifying of illusions—another mech straddled over Ratchet's hips, sleek white frame rolling into Ratchet's thrusts, black hands tangled with Ratchet's own and held over his head—

Pharma can only stare for a fraction of a sparkpulse, then hears Ratchet's noise of surprise and feels like he's going to be sick—

Then he turns and runs, and _runs,_ and what might hurt the most is that Ratchet does not follow.


End file.
